


Pan-Pacific Voices: 10 years, 5 interviews

by Neotoma



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bioluminescence, Body Horror, Chronic Disease, Disability, Fanart, Gen, Interviews, Kaiju!Newt, Oral History, PTSD, Screenplay/Script Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 20:32:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1792264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neotoma/pseuds/Neotoma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>10 years, 5 interviews -- A selection from the Pan Pacific Voices Intiative of Storycorps, archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pan-Pacific Voices: 10 years, 5 interviews

**Author's Note:**

> Art by [KarmaBees](http://karmabees.tumblr.com/post/88914166277/heres-the-art-i-did-for-neotomas-wonderful-pac) \-- go give hearts, because _so_ pretty!

After VK Day, [StoryCorps](http://storycorps.org/) instituted the Pan Pacific Defense Corps Voices Initiative to record, preserve, and share the stories of the men and women who served in the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. All stories recorded are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Facilitators are available to help record conversations.

Here are a list of suggested questions:

1Why did you join PPDC?

2 What is one memory of your service in PPDC?

3 Did you end up in the role you expected to at PPDC?

4 What did you do on VK-day?

5 How did your service change you?

6 What is one thing your regret about your time in the PPDC?

7 How did your time in the PPDC effect what your doing with your life now?

8 What one action of yours at PPDC is the one of which you're most proud?

9 Who were you closest to in the PPDC?

10 What is important to you now that the war is over?

**2026 - Hercules Hansen and Mako Mori, Juneau, Alaska:**

_Hercules Hansen was the longest serving Ranger in the PPCD, piloted every generation of Jaegers, and became Marshall of the Hong Kong Shatterdome upon the death of Stacker Pentecost alongside his own son Charles Hansen during Operation Pitfall. He has retired to his native Australia and participates in the Great Barrier Reef Reseeding Project. Mako Mori was in charge of the retrofit of Gipsy Danger and co-piloted the Jaeger with Raleigh Beckett during Operation Pitfall. She has worked in Alaska on the the reclamation of coastal land for the last year._

Herc: Let's see here – what one action of yours at PPDC is the one of which you're most proud?

Mako: Closing the Breach.

Herc: Of course.

Mako: You?

Herc: Saying goodbye to my son.

Mako: … yes.

Herc: Here's a happier one – who were you closest to in the PPDC?

Mako: [laughs] Sasha. 

Herc: Not Raleigh Beckett?

Mako: No, that was … after. It was Sasha. She was a mentor.

Herc: Stacker for me, best mates and all. We came through the academy together, driving Mark I Jaegers. Coyote Tango was a beauty.

Mako: I remember. Lucky Seven was a good machine – solid. Strong.

Herc: A bit later than Coyote, though.

Mako: More radiation shielding.

Herc: Yes. Must be why I'm still alive.

Mako: 'How did your service change you?' I know I can do what must be done, and I am less angry now. 

Herc: I lost... so many people.

Mako: We can stop.

Herc: No. I'm... I just need a moment. All right. 'Why did you join the PPDC?'

Mako: To kill kaiju.

Herc: To kill kaiju. Because it needed doing, and dropping nuclear bombs on our own cities was insane. We lost the north of Sydney to Scissure – my wife died then, and I got my son out by flying without orders to his school and piling him and as many as his classmates as I could into the helicopter. I had to leave so many children behind...

Mako: And afterwards?

Herc: That sort of things get noticed – I had reprimands on one hand and commendations on the other. When the PPDC formed up, they came to me – they needed people with experience, people who knew how to take order, and how to give them, to form the base they'd build on. A lot of people wanted to fight the kaiju, but there had to be a core who knew _how_ to fight, and fight effectively for it work. I volunteered right off, as soon as I was cleared to leave the RAAF. I didn't think I'd be a Ranger first off – being Drift-comptabile with Scott, that was a bit of a surprise, actually – but I'd done logistics work for my squadron for years. Half of being able to fight is planning, and logistics and support takes twenty people for every man in the field at the very least.

When J-science pulled me to Ranger training, I spent a lot of time with the eggheads – I've a uni degree, but this was all math and physics, everything numbers and Greek letters and things that don't make sense unless you have the right brain and five years of specialization in the field. They sent me and Scott through a ringer of testing, more after we proved we could Drift than before. 

Mako: Developing protocols to gauge Drift compatibility.

Herc: Right. That's where we started the hanbo matches in the Kwoon. Could have been anything where you have to work together and anticipate each other for a good match. Could have been ballroom dancing, if we could have gotten a bunch of ex-military to tango.

Mako: You dance?

Herc: Only with Angela. She loved that, she did.

Mako: Marshall Pentecost sent me to dance classes at first. But I was better at gymnastics and martial arts.

Mako: I was a child raised in Jaeger stations, from the Icebox to the Shatterdome. I was always studying how to be be better at fighting the kaiju. But I never looked past the war; now that we have closed the Breach, I find that I know only what a child knew about living.

Herc: … I had a life before the kaiju.

Mako: Herc?

Herc: You never think, you have a life, maybe not an exceptional life, but a nice one, with a woman you love, and a son you're proud of, and a job that means something, and it all comes down in a day. I... Angela was gone, and I had to raise Chuck on my own, and there was still a war to fight. There never seemed to be _time,_ everything was so right then, right in your face, had to be done and dealt with and never a moment for me to be anything other than a soldier.And now I have all the time in the world. I wish I had more time _then_ , instead of now.

Mako: I, too. I regret...many things.

Herc: Stacker was proud of you, always, Mako.

Mako: I tell myself that is true, but sometimes, I know I failed to be what he ne—

Herc: None of that. You were what he needed, what he was proud of. You were a joy to an old soldier's life, Mako.

Mako: But I still didn't protect him.

Herc: Mako.

Mako: Not in the end. In the end, he protected me.

Herc: The mission was more important. Closing the Breach was worth everything... 

Mako: Herc?

Herc: … I just wish... I miss my boy, Mako.

Mako: … Herc.

Herc: … I'm alright.

Mako: Perhaps we should speak of other things.

Herc: ha. Yeah. I... 'what is important to you know that the war is over', how about that one?

Mako: Yes, I can answer that. 

Herc: So can I. Rebuilding, that's what's important to me. I've been working on the restoration effort. Australia's been devastated by Kaiju Blue. I know we're all 'koala, kangaroos, and eucalyptus' to the rest of the world, but there's more than that. I'm not a scientist or a soil expert, but I can dig a ditch as well as anyone, and planting trees is just hard work; it's not like I had to figure out where to put them – that was all planned by people who know a lot more about ecology than I ever did.

Mako: I've been staying with Raleigh in Alaska, and working on blueprints. Jaeger blueprints, for the rebuilding effort.

Herc: Blueprints? New Jaeger designs?

Mako: Of a sort. Wächter. Maurer. Raumarbeiter.

Herc: Hold on, these are small...and what's with the names. Watcher-?

Mako: Watchman. Mason. Space-laborer.

Herc: In German?

Mako: It seemed fitting.

Herc: Designs for new Jaegers, smaller, and these don't look like armaments?

Mako: Wächter – to monitor for the Breach reopening, a first line of defense if the kaiju returning. Maurer – to dismantle the Wall of Life and assist with rebuilding cities. Raumarbeiter – to build the space elevator, and afterward, stations and moon bases.

Herc: ...that sounds like the stuff Gottlieb was babbling about after V-K Day. 

Mako: Dr. Gottlieb has some very helpful ideas about what we might do with Jaeger technology.

Herc: That man spent the months afterwards as cracked as Geiszler, but about space-time . He backed me into a corner twice and spoke only in calculus jargon to me.

Mako: It is a hazard of talking to K-scientists. They are very dedicated.

Herc: Cracked is what you mean.

Mako: Dedicated.

Herc: If you insist.

Mako: I do.

Herc: You're quite a woman, Mako. Stacker would be so proud.

Mako: Thank you, Herc.

Herc: Thank you, Mako. It's been good to talk to you. I needed it.

Mako: Thank you for talking to me. I'm pleased to have helped you.

**2028 Tendo and Allison Choi, Vallejo, California :**

_Tendo and Allison Choi were both J-techs during the Kaiju War. They met at the Alaskan Jaeger station, the Icebox, where Tendo was midnight-watch LOCCENT chief and Allison was ground crew for the Jaeger Delta Fisher. They both joined Marshall Pentecost at the Hong Kong Jaeger station, the Shatterdome, for Operation Pitfall – Tendo as Head of Ops-LOCCENT, Allison as Crew Forewoman on the Gipsy Danger retrofit. They currently live in Vallejo, California, where they run a logistics and shipping business together. They have been married since 2022 and have one child._

Allison: What one action of yours at PPDC is the one of which you're most proud?

Tendo: Getting Gispy to Hong Kong. We would never have closed the Breach with out her.

Allison: Gipsy wasn't my Jaeger in Alaska – I worked on Delta Fisher, piloted by Sarah and Jordan MacKenzie, a mother and son team from Oregon. They died in 2023. After that, I worked on Romeo Blue, but she went down in Seattle. It was so hard to lose two Jaegers inside a year. 

Allison: Well, you know I'm from Ruidoso, New Mexico, and my parents never understood when I joined the PPDC. 

Tendo: Your parents.

Allison: Yeah. Never mind that my brothers were both in the army; they said I could do that if I wanted to leave, but there were plenty of jobs in tourism, and it was safe in the high desert. Safe. I didn't want to be safe, I wanted to help. I did help; I joined the PPDC and was made a munitioneer. Everyone sees the big shiny Jaeger and thinks the pilots are stars. And yes, they do the fighting. But it's not like they maintain the Jaeger – two people can't do all the standard maintenance on a hundred-foot war machine, not to mention the repairs. And reloading – reloading is time-consuming and meticulous work, and grungy as hell.

Tendo: Greasemonkey.

Allison: You love it.

Tendo: Sure do. I don't have to rebuild my motorcycle by myself, do I?

Allison: I wouldn't let you. You'd put the carburetor in upside down if I let you do it on your own.

Tendo: [laughs] Maybe.

Allison: About the end of the war – I could have stayed behind when the Icebox closed – I was just coming off maternity leave when the word came down—

Tendo: We left Mikey with Allison's brother Ray, the one who was out of the army.

Allison: Well, we weren't going to leave him with Emilio or my parents – they spent most of my pregnancy sniping at me for getting pregnant. I mean, no, it didn't make a lot of sense, having a baby when things were just looking so bleak, but you have to have hope, right?

Tendo: Right. And nothing is more hopeful than a baby. And Mikey. Wow, Mikey's awesome.

Allison: Yeah, Mikey. Anyway, I could have stayed behind, but Ray and his wife were willing to take him, and so I went to Hong Kong. I'm proud I went – when Marshall Pentecost asked for volunteers, it just made sense for me to go to the Shatterdome. They were going to need experienced Jaeger ground crews if there was any chance to make the Marshall's plan work. And everyone was confidant he had a plan.

Tendo: Well, he was Stacker Pentecost. Of course, he had a plan. 

Allison: A good one. I just wish – 

Tendo: That he'd made it out the other side?

Allison: Yeah.

Tendo: I ran LOCCENT during the run on the Breach. It was … painful. And terrifying. And then we'd won and everything was off-balance.

Allison: I remember. You came down the maintenance floor and you looked like you'd been slapped with a fish.

Tendo: Probably, yeah.

Allison: I also remember how you hugged me. The world hadn't ended, and we were both alive.

Tendo: Yeah. 

Allison: And then we helped decommission the Shatterdome and went home.

Tendo: It was hard to decommission the Shatterdome. Too much like Alaska, even though we were closing it because we'd won. It took six months of work before we were able to turn everything over to the city. Mikey was _walking_ and _talking_ when we got back to the States.

Allison: We'd missed so much.

Tendo: And he didn't... we'd Skyped, but I guess seeing people on a screen and seeing them in person is really different when you're a toddler?

Allison: He wasn't sure how to act around us. And we weren't used to a toddler. He'd been a baby when we left. 

Tendo: But it's not like we could have taken him with us. Hong Kong was the front lines – not safe for a baby, and we had no time to take care of him.

Allison: But we got together when we came home. Mikey got used to us pretty fast. Maybe faster than we got used to him.

Tendo: We were still ahead of the game. A lot of PPDC veterans had kids right afterwards, and I'd hear about how badly they were coping. 

Allison: Yeah, we were lucky. We already had Mikey, and sort of had an idea about how to do the parenting thing in crazy conditions. The people who came home from the PPDC and tried to go back to normal lives kind of blew their gaskets. They kept trying to fit into old roles and they didn't realize they had changed.

Tendo: I got messages from everyone – LOCCENT techs, Jaeger crew-members, even Dr. Gottlieb – all on 'help, how does baby work'? Like I was suddenly their parenting guru because I'd been LOCCENT chief. 

Allison: That's what reputation for competency gets you, honey. That and you knew everyone in the Shatterdome.

Tendo: Yeah, yeah. But knowing who to go to for coffee beans or spare parts for your electronics doesn't mean I'm the guy for childcare advice.

Allison: To be fair, we did have Mikey before the end of the war, and lots of our friends didn't until after. We're way ahead of the curve.

Tendo: Yeah, but you'd think they'd talk to their own families – 

Allison: I don't know. I find it hard to talk to Ray sometimes and he supported my decision to go with you. It's just that other Shatterdome veterans, they understand what it was like.

Tendo: Scrounging to get Gipsy up and running again.

Allison: Arguing with custom officials who wanted bribes to get our gear into the city.

Tendo: Cutting deals with the kaiju dealers for funding. What a nightmare.

Allison: Betting over cards for luxury rations, like chocolate and actual coffee.

Tendo: Oh god, coffee beans. They were like gold, they were so hard to get and actually have them usable. Word to the wise – don't play cards with Gottlieb if you have something he really wants. I'm pretty sure he can deal from the bottom of the deck.

Allison: Dr. Gottlieb cheats at cards?

Tendo: Not that we ever caught him at... he just had a habit of winning when it was the good coffee beans in the pot, you know?

Allison: Maybe he can count cards because he's a mathematician, honey.

Tendo: And thank god for that.

Allison: Yeah, if he wasn't a stubborn ass who actually as good at his math as he thinks he is... well.

Tendo: Yeah.

Allison: It's been three years, and we've moved to Vallejo, I still wake up sometimes thinking I'm in Hong Kong. 

Tendo: I do too. And when I look outside and see the bay, I sometimes have a hard time remembering what year it is. I get all flipped around and wonder why I'm not across the water in San Francisco for a moment. It's eerie.

Allison: But I think we're doing good here. 

Tendo: It's my home, and I don't think I could live anywhere where people didn't understand about the kaiju, about what knowing one could come ashore any day was like.

Allison: My family would certainly like it if we'd move inland. Kaiju Blue is still a problem, and there's that new syndrome that's been in the news, where animals have been showing up with tentacles and glowing blue patches when they're things like sea lions and gulls – there have even been some kids born with glowing light spots – but I can't talk to people who live inland about any of it and get them to understand. I've just given up trying.

Tendo: I don't talk about it with inlanders either – the business is one thing, but otherwise, no.

Allison: I'm so glad that we understand together, honey.

Tendo: Hey, you're the best person I've ever met, Allison. I'm glad we're together.

Allison: Thanks, Tendo.

Tendo: Thank you, Allison.

**2031 Hermann and Vanessa, Hilo, Hawai'i:**

_Dr. Hermann Gottlieb was a K-Scientist serving in the Hong Kong Shatterdome through VK Day; his specialty was the study of the Breach. Dr. Vanessa Travers is a biomedical engineer who specializes in prosthetics and neural control systems. Together, they are work at the Mauna Kea Science Reserve. They have been married for since 2018 and have two children._

Vanessa: Coming back was hard, wasn't I?

Hermann: Yes. I had all but forgotten how to live in the world. The PPDC was all that I did for 10 years...

Vanessa: And then it was gone.

Hermann: Yes.

Vanessa: Because we won.

Hermann: Yes. We closed the Breach. It was... I went to Hong Kong because Marshall Pentecost asked me to come, but you know, I didn't think I'd come back. I didn't think...

Vanessa: It's all right.

Hermann: My analysis was … I argued with everyone about it, but the numbers did not lie. The double event, and the triple event, they were just the cusp, the tipping point. The Breach was stabilizing and once it did – 

Vanessa: Hermann...?

Hermann: Excuse me, excuse me...[choked breathing]

Vanessa: It's all right.

Hermann: Yes. … The calculation I had made, if we had not succeeded in closing the Breach, we would have had kaiju coming every four minutes by the end of the week. It was terrifying. I... would like to speak of something else now.

Vanessa: Here's an easy one - what one action of yours at PPDC is the one of which you're most proud?

Hermann: Drifting with Newton—I kept him from killing himself while we discovered how to close the Breach.

Vanessa: Would he really have died?

Hermann: I found him seizing on the floor after his first Drift. The idiot had done it alone, with no monitoring equipment, no one to get him out if it went bad – just him and the forebrain of a monster in a jar. I was so _furious_ with him.

Vanessa: He's not that bad now.

Hermann: He doesn't have the _opportunity_ to kill himself with self-experimentation anymore. Someone would catch him at it before it got to that point, I am sure. It's is not just the two of us alone in a K-Science lab anymore.

Vanessa: Was it really that bad?

Hermann: Marshall Pentecost was trying to stretch eight months of minimal funding to cover Operation Pitfall – retrofitting Gipsy Danger and maintaining the other Jaegers – that and simply feeding the Shatterdome staff took almost all the money he had. I had a budget for one machine with enough power to run my models and whatever I could scrounge from the closed labs. Newton had a budget for personal protective equipment that stretched as far as seven cases of vinyl gloves but not to laundry service for lab coats. It was a miracle neither of us died from inhaling chalk dust or from biohazard contamination from Newton's specimens. Conditions were terrible.

Vanessa: But you got the job done.

Hermann: There was no alternative. We had to close the Breach. We _had_ to. At any cost.

Hermann: Hong Kong in the days before Operation Pitfall was a dangerous city. The Chinese central government had always had a shaky grip on the city, and there were black marketeers, BuenaKai, and all sorts of unsavory characters in the Bone Slums, as well as the poor and the desperate. 

Hermann: Not to mention inside the Shatterdome – conditions were far from ideal. The lack of funds meant we were short of supplies, and truly, Newton and I scavenged through the entire K-science wing to keep ourselves supplied. Every lab but ours was closed, and we shared space because there wasn't enough electricity not to. It was extremely stressful, especially because we truly did not have safety equipment we should have, as well as not having power.

It seems petty and ridiculous in retrospect, but I put hazard tape down the center of the lab just so that we would keep the kaiju specimens contained to Newton's side of the lab. And then spent months reprimanding him as his laboratory technique became sloppier and more reckless – he handled the lack of funds worse than I did, for all that kept up his incessant optimism and enthusiasm about the kaiju. I never decided reckless self-experimentation was an option, and Newton was defaulting to it four months into Operation Pitfall.

Vanessa: Go on.

Hermann: It was very hard, you realize. I missed you tremendously, and Skyping only alleviated that for so long...

Vanessa: I couldn't visit you after the first couple of months, having turned up so inconveniently pregnant.

Hermann: Yes well, I did apologize for reacting like that—

Vanessa: You did, and I did freak out myself when I realized we'd managed to 'oops' ourselves into it.

Hermann: Yes— I mean, it's not that I didn't – I mean, once I calmed down and accepted you were pregnant, you obviously couldn't come to help or even visit. Birth defect rates in cities that were attacked by kaiju are still astronomically high, and there was no reason to court that if you could remain in Europe for the duration. If all went well with Operation Pitfall, there was no reason to risk you or Margarete, and if things turned out poorly, than perhaps the Anti-Kaiju Wall could have been made to work. Somehow.

Vanessa: You don't believe that.

Hermann: No, I don't. But I have been proven wrong before, and humans are endlessly inventive. Perhaps someone could have made it work. Perhaps someone could have seen something I hadn't in my models. But I doubt it. My projections … I spent so much time on them, and they accurately predicted the acceleration of the Breach events and kaiju landfalls. I had it, I had a working predictive model, and the predictions it was generating were terrifying. The Breach was stabilizing, and when it was truly stable and open, the kaiju would have been able to transit at the rate of one every four minutes.

Hermann: And then Newton Drifted. That was possible the worst shock of my life, to come into the lab – I was going to invite him up to watch the test of Gipsy Danger with me – to find Newton seizing on the floor. And when he told Marshall Pentecost about the Kaiju Masters... I couldn't take it in. I didn't want to take it in. I wanted him to be wrong, for what he was saying to be _impossible_. Because if Newton was right when he talked about the Kaiju Masters, if the kaiju were being deliberately sent, we were fighting a war we didn't even comprehend against an enemy whose technology we could barely perceive, let alone understand.

Vanessa: If the Kaiju Masters existed, we understood them about as well as the Indians who met Columbus understood what he was.

Hermann: Worse. Invaders who were entirely outside our context, and far beyond our abilities to fight effectively. Operation Pitfall slammed their door closed on them, but we did _not_ destroy their ability to make _doors_. 

Vanessa: Do you think they'll try to reopen the Breach?

Hermann: Eventually. I... the Drift with Newt and kaiju fetus was extremely unpleasant. Extremely. And very disorientating. But I am sure the Kaiju Masters will attempt another Breach. I just... their time-sense was strange. I have no idea if they will try tomorrow, or a hundred years from now, or a thousand, or a million. Newton perceived memories of dinosaurs that I did not, which indicates that the Kaiju Masters are an extremely successful species to have not changed in 65 millions year, or that time does not function the same in the Anteverse, or the Breach somehow can connect different times as well as spaces. It is a problem for people other than me to work on.

Hermann: I've moved onto the space elevator. 

Vanessa: You always loved space.

Hermann: I always have. Humans as a species need the other worlds in our system. I would like to be part of that, part of building something for the long term, instead of trying to destroy.

Vanessa: The space elevator is pretty sweet. I've been adapting Jaeger technology to run the machines to build it. With Mako Mori – she's brilliant at Jaeger designs – we've got a few working prototypes for space construction. They're much smaller systems than Jaegers, but that's all to the good. A Raumarbeiter mecha is a third the size of a Jaeger, requires an eighth the materials to make, and can be operated one person without causing fatal aneurysms, though it's more effective with a two-pilot system, especially if you need to equip it with multiple specialized arms for construction.

Hermann: The Foothold satellite has been an interesting project to work on.

Vanessa: It's going up in a month – building on previous experience, we're hoping to tether it by next year, and have climbers – mecha that can climb up and down a space elevator instead of having to be launched with rockets, which are fuel expensive – up in three.

Hermann: It has been a delight to work on something hopeful these past few years.

Vanessa: I know it's made you healthier. You might actually get to a normal weight, instead of being skinny forever.

Hermann: Vanessa...

Vanessa: Oh, I like your chicken legs, sweetie, you know that. I just worried, the last years of the war. You looked paler and skinnier every time we visited. It was like you were wasting away.

Hermann: Well, yes. Stress. Without it, I do feel better, physically.

Vanessa: Even though we've had our ups and down. 

Hermann: The photophores. That went … badly.

Vanessa: I was scared. You were scared. Why was our baby glowing in the dark? 

Hermann: And Newton was ridiculously better at it than either of us. 

Vanessa: Admittedly, he'd been reading the literature. 

Hermann: Because he had suspicions. And when he ran that ostentatious demonstration with our blood samples.

Vanessa: He thought it would be reassuring.

Hermann: Then perhaps he should have checked what the results would be before he did a dramatic presentation! He might have been better prepared for his own blood to fluoresce.

Vanessa: I will never forget how appalled he looked. He was so apologetic and afraid and it made me afraid for Margarete. And when he managed to explain...

Hermann: That the Pacific Acquired Teratomorphosis didn't appear fatal or even dangerous to children, for values of not dangerous that include photophores and sensory fronds—

Vanessa: That was reassuring. Until we noticed that he kept emphasizing 'to children'.

Hermann: That idiot. His blood had fluoresced as well as Margarete's.

Vanessa: Yeah, I was pretty angry at him too. And then he came apart on us.

Hermann: It is impossible to be angry at Newton when he's distressed and guilty. It feels like kicking a puppy.

Vanessa: A sad, apologetic puppy.

Hermann: Thank goodness he doesn't know how fake that reaction. He'd manipulate people shamelessly if he did.

Vanessa: He would if he could, but he really is terrible at people who aren't science geeks. I'm amazed that he could even talk to Jaeger pilots.

Hermann: Oh, he couldn't. I had to apologize on his behalf many times, as he had an amazing capacity to say exactly the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. Fighting in the war made us all angrier and less forgiving as long as we kept having to fight kaiju. We came together in the end, but we lost so many people, and wore ourselves so thin.

Vanessa: I remember. You looked like a ghost – a tired, skinny ghost, when I saw you again for the first time after the Breach closed.

Hermann: Yes, and I was snappish and angry and had horrible nightmares for months.

Vanessa: And now dream of the stars and we design spaceships.

Hermann: And now we design spaceships.

**2030: Raleigh Becket, Anchorage, Alaska.**

_Raleigh Becket was a Ranger during the Kaiju War, piloting the Jaeger Gipsy Danger with his brother Yancy until Knifehead in 2020. After his brother's death in combat, he resigned from the PPDC and spent several years working on the construction of the Anti-Kaiju Coastal Wall. He was recruited by Marshall Stacker Pentecost to pilot with Mako Mori in Operation Pitfall. After VK Day, he returned to his native Alaska, attended University of Alaska, and is in his 2nd year of teaching at Caitlin Lightcap Intermediate School._

Raleigh: When I was discharged from the program, I had a survivor's benefit of ten thousand dollars, a left arm that didn't work quite right, and a medical evaluation that didn't qualify me for disability support. I used the funds to get training and certified – I spent the next year and a half doing as much roughnecking as the foremen would hire me for. It was brutal work – tough, dirty, long hours – but it paid the bills and kept me fed.

The Wall of Life was proposed just when the oil companies decided that drilling just wasn't profitable enough what with the insurance pay-outs when a kaiju surfaced and took out a rig – paying off the crews' families and oil clean-up just didn't make sense when they could put that money in the Atlantic, or on the coast of Africa.

I hated going to the Wall, chasing shifts to make a living, but it was a bad time for everyone. I talked to my sister now and then, but she was pissed at me – maybe because I didn't die with Yancy. Maybe having two brothers dead as a heroes would have been easier than one dead and one a disaster. She scrapped up enough money and made it to Montana.

I stayed and I worked. I didn't even care that the Wall was a stupid idea. I'd been a Ranger, I'd seen what kaiju could do. The Wall was a hundred feet high, but some of the kaiju were bigger than that even before Knifehead – the Wall wasn't going to do much good unless there were Jaegers on top of it, and there weren't. There just weren't.

It paid, though. Money at first, but when the Wall got bigger, they paid in dollars less and in rations more. You have no idea how desperate people were getting. I saw guys who should've been retired volunteer for the top of the Wall because they got 300 extra points a week on their ration cards – you could feed someone in your family with that bonus, maybe two if they were kids. But working the top was asking to die – people fell a lot, safety regs were ignored, lots of people died. There were always people desperate to work the Wall.

I was kind of lucky, actually. With Jaz gone inland and Yancy dead, I didn't have anyone to worry about. Things were still tight – I'm a big guy, and even taking hazard pay when I could, I lost weight. Wasn't sleeping well. Felt tired a lot of the time. 

Building the Wall was hard, grubby, dangerous work. And it was fucking lonely. 

You didn't talk much, because you had a quota of work to do, and each day they'd dock your draw if you didn't get it done. You could lose a day's rations each week if things got backed up. I didn't have family like a lot of the guys, but none of us could afford bread – just pasta boxed up for years, or potatoes until you were sick of them. Meat you couldn't buy, not with rations – too expensive.

I did what a lot of guys did, and got a hunting license, bought cartridges a few at a time because I couldn't ever afford a whole box, and shot my dinner. I couldn't afford big game tags, so I ate a lot of grouse and ptarmigan, and sometimes squirrel.

I went through the motions of living for a long time – get up, eat, go work on the Wall, eat lunch, go work on the Wall some more, come back to a crappy room in the transient dorm, eat dinner, go to sleep, repeat. At least I didn't have to think about that. But funny as it sounds, being numb like that, not having to care about things because there was no one left for me to care about, it helped eventually.

Being on the Wall, it was quiet. Silent, eventually – in my head, I mean. The way the Drift is silence. I felt hollowed out, like there was no me anymore, just this shell that I used to be that could be anything. I found me up on the Wall, in the quiet, or enough of me to keep going. 

When Marshall Pentecost came looking for a pilot, I think being on the Wall for so long, being so quiet and still inside my head, that's what made it so I could say yes to him. I couldn't have done it five years before – too hurt, too messed up and angry. But those years out of the PPDC, they made it so I could succeed, so I could be a steady point again. 

So that I could Drift.

And I gotta tell you, Mako made it all worth it. All that hollow emptiness, all that quiet and all that moose pucks about how the Wall would save us...

Well, the Wall saved me. It's not something that anyone meant to happen – 'let's build a Wall so that ex-Rangers have something to do while they're waiting for someone to need them' – hell, I'm half-convinced the Wall was designed so that everyone on the coast would stay there and be eaten while the rich people moved to Kansas – but it was what I needed when I needed it.

Stillness. Quiet. A place to find myself again. So that when I met Mako, when I went back to Gypsy Danger, I'd be ready for her.

And it was worth it. 

She's amazing.

**2035: Newton Geiszler and Margarete Gottlieb, Hilo, Hawai'i**

_Dr. Newton Geiszler was a K-Scientist serving in the Hong Kong Shatterdome through VK Day; his specialty was kaiju xenobiology. He is now a professor of biomedical engineering at University of Hawai'i researching kaiju contamination and remediation, as well as consulting on the Extraterrestrial Biosphere Project. Margarete Gottlieb in a 4th grade student at Gage Brothers Elementary, and Dr. Geiszler's god-daughter._

Newt: So, Reet, you got your questions?

Margarete: [rattling paper] Yes, I wrote them down. I am prepared. 

Newt: I see that. So, what's your first questions, kiddo?

Margarete: Why did you join the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps?

Newt: Well, giant monsters had just risen out of the ocean... Actually, I was teaching at MIT, making a lot of science happen, and the kaiju were just the biggest, most fascinating question that there was ever going to be. Of course I jumped at the chance to study them – I was actually on the Joint Exobiology Task Force before the PPDC even got started. That was when we thought Trespasser was unique. We folded into the PPDC after Cabo, and I went to the academy in 2016.

Margarete: So you joined for science?

Newt: Science is awesome, kiddo.

Margarete: I know that. Science is why I'm going to live on Mars when I'm a grown-up.

Newt: You are?

Margarete: Yes.

Newt: Do your parents know this?

Margarete: Of course. They built a space elevator, Uncle Newt. You use it to go to the moon, and then you go to Mars.

Newt: Mars will be cool.

Margarete: Mars will be _so_ cool! Ahem. What is one memory of your service in PPDC?

Newt: Just one memory?

Margarete: One memory.

Newt: Okay. Hmm. Hope this doesn't sound too silly but I was at the Aerie – that was what the called the Los Angeles Jaeger station – when Yamarishi attacked the city. It was the first time I'd gotten to fresh kaiju remains – nothing that had been collected from rotten specimens. I had to wait a few days while the ground crews neutralized the Kaiju Blue, but I was first in afterwards. It was so amazing, better than my work at MIT. I mean, MIT was a blast, there's no denying that, but running K-Science – it was important the way artificial tissue research wasn't.

Margarete: Did you end up in the role you expected to at PPDC?

Newt: No – I expected to be a PI – principal investigator – under some department head, and that is how it worked for a while, but I definitely didn't expect to be half of the entire K-science division at the end of all things. That was... not so good.

Margarete: What did you do on V-K Day?

Newt: Lots of things, most of them dangerous. Afterwards, I think I hugged everyone in LOCCENT and then fell asleep on your Papa's shoulder. It was a long day.

Margarete: How did your service change you?

Newt: I... huh. You know, I don't know that my service changed me, not mentally. The Drift changed me. 

Margarete: I don't understand.

Newt: … It's hard to explain, Reet. Hermann and I... your Papa is my very best friend, you know that? I like your mom too, but your Papa and I shared a brain for a little bit. It's like we copied the best bits of ourselves and gave them to each other. It's weird.

Margarete: It sounds weird.

Newt: A little bit.

Margarete: Okay...What is one thing your regret about your time in the PPDC?

Newt: Too many people died because I couldn't figure out what needed to be done earlier.

Margarete: Papa says that too.

Newt: Yeah, well, science is the practice of figuring out what doesn't work until you figure out what does. It's not always fast, more is the pity.

Margarete: Mum says "if it's fast it might not be good".

Newt: Your Mom's an engineer. She likes to double check things.

Margarete: How did your time in the PPDC effect what your doing with your life now?

Newt: That's a toughie.

Margarete: No, it's not.

Newt: Yeah it is. Because things were kind of messed up after V-K Day. I was famous and that made it easier to go places. But I was sick, and that made it harder.

Margarete: You were sick?

Newt: My PATS, Reet. 

Margarete: Everybody has that.

Newt: No, everybody does not have Pacific Acquired Teratomorphosis Syndrome. You just think everyone does because—

Margarete: Everybody in my class has lightspots, at least. Even Mummy and Papa have some. Only _old_ people don't have any. You mean you're turning into a lizard.

Newt: … I'm not actually turning into a lizard.

Margarete: A dinosaur.

Newt: Don't I wish. No. Pacific Acquired Teratomorphosis Syndrome – we thought it was just another way Kaiju Blue poisoning showed itself at first. It wasn't until we started seeing dolphins with sensory fronds, and babies developing photophores – lightspots, to you, Reet – that we figured it might be something weirder. 

Newt: It took some work, and I was really involved in the research for a while, to figure out that PATS is something different from Kaiju Blue. The kaiju, they were sent to destroy cities, okay? But the last two years before we closed the Breach, they were also carrying a transformative agent. You know about your parents work on the space program – how we're going to go to Mars soon?

Margarete: Yes.

Newt: So Mars is pretty barren – small, rocky, not much of an atmosphere. We're going to have to bring everything, from bacteria on up. But the kaiju, when they came through the Breach, Earth wasn't barren – it had all sorts of life. But not exactly the kind the Kaiju Masters needed to support themselves when they came through – and they wanted to do so really a lot.

Margarete: Okay.

Newt: So they figured out a way to put something in their kaiju so that the kaiju would shed it into the water and onto the land that would turn Earth life into something that was more like what was on the Kaiju Master's world, so that Earth would have the things that they'd want growing when they got here. Like we're dropping bacteria on Mars so that there will photosynthesis and a water cycle there when we finally get there.

Margarete: But Earth already had life...

Newt: Yup. Which is why we call the transformative agent's effects Pacific Acquired Teratomorphosis Syndrome. If you get exposed, you might develop photophores – lightspots – which are pretty common, or sensory fronds, which aren't so common –

Margarete: Jeff and Keiko in my class both have fronds. Keiko only has fronds, instead of hair. It's so pretty.

Newt: I'm glad you think so.

Margarete: Your fronds are kind of pretty? But you still have hair, so not as pretty as Keiko's.

Newt: I totally understand, Reet. There is no way I can compete with your friend on the point of pretty fronds. But there are lots of effects to PATS, and it scares people who haven't developed symptoms, because they aren't used to thinking that they might develop photophores, or fronds, or any of the other symptoms.

Margarete: That's kind of dumb.

Newt: A little bit, yeah.

Margarete: Why are people dumb?

Newt: Because people are people.

Margarete: That's not an answer. That's like when Mummy and Papa say 'because I say so'.

Newt: Yeah, maybe it is. And no, it's not fair. Next questions, Reet. Okay?

Margarete: Okay...What one action of yours at PPDC is the one of which you're most proud?

Newt: Drifting with a kaiju – we learned so much, we learned how to close the Breach – 

Margarete: Papa says you almost killed yourself with the kaiju...

Newt: Yeah, I almost did. That's why your Papa didn't let me go alone the second time.

Margarete: Oh.

Newt: He's pretty great. You know that, don't you? Your Papa is really awesome.

Margarete: [giggles] Yes. [clears throat] Who were you closest to in the PPDC?

Newt: Aww, come on, that isn't even a question!

Margarete: Yes it is.

Newt: Your Papa – Hermann Gottlieb that is, for any future researchers listening to this like the super-nosy historians you are. I was closest to Hermann – all of K-Science, really, but Hermann and I shared lab space and we were the last men standing in K-Science. 

Margarete: There were no other K-Scientists?

Newt: Not at the end, not at Hong Kong. Some people left because of budget cuts, some went back to their universities, some had died, but Hermann and me, we were there to the end. Because someone had to be. Because we had to be.

Newt: And your Mom and Papa, when I developed lightspots, I didn't do it easily, not like you. I was sick for a little bit, and your parents helped me over that.

Margarete: Mummy's good when you get sick, and Papa makes the best soup.

Newt: Yup, he does. I used to filch some when I was feeling sad in Hong Kong. He'd grumble at me, but always made it again.

It's been ten years since we closed the Breach, and there's been a lot of changes in my life. I'm back to research and teaching at a university, instead of being a K-scientist in the PPDC. It's a lot more peaceful, but I have to tell you, Reet, the best things about the PPDC was the sense of purpose, the feeling that you were doing something important and bigger than you, and everyone around to felt the same way.

Reet: And now you don't like what you're doing?

Newt: I like what I'm doing fine. I'm still making the world a better place. It's just not as dramatic as it was. But you know, Reet, sometimes drama tires you out.

Reet: Like when you watch Magic Star Power Girls for too long?

Newt: Yeah, like that. And sometimes I don't feel good because my PATS means that my body keeps wanting to change, and sometimes it's not doing a good job of it.

Reet: Your feet are a little funny looking. Papa says you used to walk better than him.

Newt: And now I don't, because my feet are changing shape. It's a pain, and sometimes a little scary. On the other hand, sometimes when its very quiet, in the middle of the night I can hear whales singing in the dark.

Margarete: That sounds pretty.

Newt: It is. Pretty and awesome.

Margarete: I'm glad you're my uncle.

Newt: Why, thank you, Reet. I'm glad you're my goddaughter.


End file.
